SPIKE IN VIOLENCE IS TRACED TO DRUGS

U.S. drug policy has actually fueled crime, some say, and alternatives
- --including legalization -- are being considered.

Lynn Mayo calls her neighborhood, Minneapolis' Phillips area, "Baby Beirut"
because of the constant gunfire from drug dealers and the gangs they spawn.
She has watched houses and garages burn to the ground, the target of
arsonists. She has seen children younger than 10 running the streets until
midnight and spending the night sleeping on porches. That violence and the
resulting spike in homicide rates in Minneapolis and St. Paul are the
unintended consequences of a war on drugs that has made drug dealing a
lucrative business, police and elected officials have noted.

While the official policy of the United States and the Clinton
administration remains tough enforcement of the drug laws, some state and
local governments are experimenting with other tactics. Hennepin County
borrowed an idea, the drug court, from Miami. Arrested users are forced into
treatment under threat of jail time if they fail. The voters of California
and Arizona decided marijuana should be used as medical treatment.
Connecticut is looking at changing drug laws that some politicians think may
have done more harm than good. Discussion of legalizing drugs, led by
Baltimore Mayor Kurt Schmoke, former Kansas City Police Chief Joseph
McNamara and federal judge Robert Sweet of New York City continues to pop up.

Law enforcement officials are resigned to the futility of breaking up the
drug trade and the gangs that engage in it, even as they diligently crack
down on dealers. When a half-dozen members of the Detroit Boyz gang were
arrested and charged in federal court two years ago, U.S. Attorney David
Lillehaug said the cocaine trade disruption was temporary,

St. Paul Police Chief William Finney, who has served on national committees
that stress tough law enforcement of drug laws, acknowledged current efforts
have limited effect.

"It doesn't correct it, it just keeps a lid on it," Finney said.

"We have to figure out a way to take the profit out of drugs," said state
Rep, Alice Hausman, a St. Paul DFLer, "Just look at the common-sense
perspective. If suddenly they couldn't make a lot of money at it, would they
be pushing drugs to your kids?"

Certainly, there are strong sentiments against weakening the legal controls
on marijuana, cocaine, heroin or the other illegal drugs.

"Legalization would increase drug use," said Jeanette McDougal,
co-chairwoman of Drugwatch Minnesota, which fights efforts to weaken drug
laws. "If they legalized it, can they guarantee things would be better? I'm
fascinated with the whole subject, but my fascination is minor compared to
my worry. The devastation is so great."

Consequences

Tough drug laws and enforcement have not stopped the flow of drugs in the
Twin Cities, To the contrary, there is an underground economy of wholesale
and retail cocaine dealers who have made whole neighborhoods nearly
unlivable and caused dramatic increases in homicides and shots fired,

Carol Foss can sit in her house near the 700 block of Charles Avenue, in St.
Paul's Frogtown, and point out one of the eight men she says controls the
drug trade from University to Thomas avenues, She can describe the drug
transactions, She can tell you about the gunshots she has heard and the rule
of thumb in her house: If you saw the gun being fired, call police, If you
just heard it, don't call, because you will have no information to give the
cops,

Across the river in Minneapolis, the Phillips neighborhood has become
notorious for brazen open-air dealing, despite periodic police crackdowns,
On a rainy afternoon last September, a strung-out crack dealer was working
the corner at Franklin and Park avenues, waiting for cars to pull to the
curb so he could lean in and make a sale. He was oblivious to the weather
and the young children walking home from school, He brushed off a reporter
and photographer who wanted to talk, because it interfered with business.

A half-mile east, Lynn Mayo has watched apartments and homes become crack
houses, listened to the barrage of gunfire and seen 10 houses burn as the
deterioration encouraged dealers and others to torch garages and abandoned
homes,

Through her efforts to organize strong block clubs and work with landlords
and police, the worst of the gunfire and crack houses have been curbed, Mayo
said she questions the current US, drug policy and is willing to consider a
wide range of alternatives,

"I'm willing to look at legalizing crack, because it's an underground
economic system and it crops up when the regular system isn't working for
them," Mayo said, referring to people who feel shut out of society,

When the Minneapolis homicide rate reached a record 97 in 1995 and a
still-hefty 85 the next year, and St, Paul's rate shot up to a near-record
29 in 1994 (from 22 the previous year), police officials pointed to the same
cause: illegal drugs and the gangs and other dealers who were fighting each
other for the lucrative market, Nationwide, then surgeon general Dr.
Joycelyn Elders characterized the high murder rate, 50 percent of which was
drug-related, as a public health menace.

"As far as St, Paul, there has been, with the advent of drugs and the drug
culture, a greater acceptance of violence," Finney said.

McDougal, of Drugwatch Minnesota, dismissed the idea of abandoning tough
enforcement because of escalating violence. She called the disintegration of
neighborhoods like Phillips and Frogtown a local problem. While she said she
had no solutions, McDougal said there had to be a way to help those
neighborhoods without having to "devastate a nation" by legalizing drugs.

She pointed out the U.S. homicide rate has been dropping since it reached a
near-record high in 1991 and said it correlates with tough drug enforcement.

New solutions

A small, but growing, movement among the middle class and opinion leaders in
Minnesota is urging a full debate of options to combat narcotics.

Rep. Hausman; Dr. Mark Willenbring, an associate professor of psychiatry at
the University of Minnesota; and Billie Young, the former owner of Old
Mexico Shop in St. Paul are among those who have concluded changes are due.

Hausman and Young think legalizing some drugs could be the answer, while
Willenbring looks to a middle ground where enforcement is cut and treatment
and drug courts are beefed up.

Young would like to see marijuana and cocaine sold legally from licensed
stores as liquor is, with strict laws on who could purchase and where it
could be consumed. The money saved on enforcement then could be poured into
education to reduce use, as has been done with tobacco, Young said.

Young publishes a newsletter called "It's Time for Change!" in hopes of
spreading the message for her Drug Policy Reform Group.

Hausman has organized a related group called the Minnesota Drug Policy
Council. Last year, she pushed through a law allowing pharmacists to sell
needles without a prescription. It was an effort to get clean needles into
the hands of drug users to cut the spread of HIV and other diseases, Hausman
said.

She introduced a bill last year, and again this year, that would establish a
commission to study some of the state's drug policies such as sentences for
possession and determine whether they are working or should be changed. It's
patterned after a similar law in Connecticut, but so far, Hausman said, she
has been unable to gain support for it.

In February, the Minnesota Drug Policy Council brought Jonathan Caulkins, an
associate professor at Carnegie Mellon University's Heinz School of Public
Policy. Caulkins discussed his studies at the RAND Corp., which found that
mandatory minimum sentences curbed the drug trade only slightly. The RAND
studies also found that treatment, even if the person later went back to
using illegal drugs, was more effective than money spent on law enforcement.

"In a nutshell, I'm in favor of reforming our drug policies," Caulkins said.
"But I think legalization is a terrible idea, with the possible exception of
marijuana."

Federal, state and local drug efforts cost about $40 billion a year, and
between 66 and 70 percent of that is for law enforcement, he said. By
cutting the law enforcement portion by 25 percent, government could save
close to $6 billion a year, which could go to treatment. Law enforcement
efforts still would be better financed than in 1985, when drug enforcement
budgets ballooned, Caulkins said.

Willenbring, because of his work as an addiction psychiatrist at the
Veterans Administration Medical Center, said he would be willing to
decriminalize marijuana but not the more addicting cocaine, he said.

Putting more money into drug treatment programs, getting rid of mandatory
minimum sentences for drug crimes and adding drug courts are some of the
options, he said.

"If we do the no-brainer, it might shrink their market a lot," Willenbring
said. "We won't know until we've tried."

[END]

BOX INSET: Sorting out the facts

Some people arguing for new strategies say false information about drugs has
made it more difficult to discuss alternatives.

Drug use trends

The 1996 National Household Survey on Drug Abuse found that about 13 million
Americans used an illicit drug in the month before the survey. That was
virtually unchanged from 12.8 million the year before; it is half the 1979
peak of 25 million but up from 10.4 million in 1993. Marijuana is king in
the drug world. The survey found 78 percent of illicit drug use was
marijuana, followed by cocaine at 14 percent and heroin at less than 1 percent.

Addictiveness

The idea that marijuana is a gateway to harder narcotics such as cocaine and
heroin is "not an idea that should be taken very seriously," said Dr. Lester
Grinspoon, a professor of psychology at the Harvard Medical School. Research
has found about 60 percent of heroin users smoked marijuana. But about 90
percent used alcohol first and nearly as many smoked cigarettes, Grinspoon
said. "There is confusion of cause and effect," he added.

In addition, common wisdom holds that anyone who uses marijuana, cocaine or
any drug is automatically -- and equally -- addicted. A report in the
January 1995 American Journal of Public Health reported 75 percent of
marijuana smokers and 85 percent of cocaine users quit, usually without
help, by their mid-30s.

Drug sentencing trends

Federal sentencing guidelines require that a person possess 500 grams of
powder cocaine. to draw the same sentence as one caught with 5 grams of
crack cocaine, a policy that is overloading federal prisons with small-time
(and mostly black) crack dealers and fueling the need for more prisons in
Minnesota and across the country. A 1994 Justice Department study found 21
percent of federal prisoners were low-level drug offenders with no record of
criminal violence or sophisticated criminal activity.

Yet, Dr. Dorothy Hatsukami, a University of Minnesota psychiatry professor,
found in research published with Marian Fischman that there is very little
difference between the two types of cocaine. The researchers found "no
support for the 100-to-1 sentencing ratio," Hatsukami said.